Messing Up
by Parachutingkitten
Summary: Harumi and Morro in a slow conversation after her death. One Shot maybe? I may continue if there is enough interest and I get some inspiration.
1. Chapter 1

My eyes opened slowly, the pain from before still stung, but only mentally. Like I could sense it, but it wasn't really happening. Not really. Not to me. Not to this version of myself. I lay on grass, soft, plush, almost unnatural. It cradled my head, my limbs, my body as if I were born out of the ground. In front of my eyes stood a figure clothed in green. At first, a spark of hope swelled in me, but this figure was darker than _him_. My vision cleared as I saw it wasn't someone I'd met before. But it was someone I was familiar with. He smiled down at me halfheartedly as I realized… he was dead.

I was dead.

Memories flooded back to me of where I had been… what I had done. Feelings of dread and panic came back to hit me. Everything was wrong where I had left it. I sat up slowly, observing my surroundings. There was nothing there, just an endless field of grass. No trees, no people, no clouds, no sky. Just the grass set in an empty void. I turned to the figure still standing next to me.

"I messed up… didn't I?"

He sat next to me, hugging his knees. "We've all messed up here."

I looked down at my hands, scars littering my form. Old scars resurfaced, new ones now healed. It was like the history of my body lie on my skin. "Do you know who I am?"

Morro nodded. "Watched you from up here. Not really sure why. You reminded me of myself I guess. It was funny. Watching you. Watching Lloyd."

"Lloyd." I sighed. "He was right… he was right the whole time."

"He's the green ninja. He tends to do that," He shrugged.

"I wish I could go back. Just to tell him. To tell him he was right, to tell him that I'm sorry, to try and fix this whole giant mess I've made for him to fix." I buried my face in my hands. "He shouldn't have to be the one to fix it."

"The kid does a lot," he agreed. "I'm sure he can handle it. People like us don't make it easy, but nothing gets in his way."

I looked back up at the emptiness that surrounded me. "I was so stupid! What was I doing?! I could never handle this!" I stood up, wanting to pace my thoughts out. "I just didn't get it. I had such a hard heart for so long, I was so set on this one mindset that I screwed everything up!"

"It's not your fault. Not really." He chimed in, still sitting.

"Yeah, okay, sure," I rolled my eyes.

"I mean… it kinda is. But you can't place all the weight on your shoulders."

I crossed my arms in front of my body, letting out a deep sigh. "… He loved me. Didn't he?"

Silence

"He really, honestly loved me, didn't he? The one person left on Earth who actually cared for me, and I decided to keep hating him. I push him away, I antagonize him. I was given one last chance, and I blew it!" Tears fell down my cheeks as I turned to face Morro. "How could I mess that up?"

I looked at me for a moment, blank. "I can't answer that for you. You're the only one who knows."

I looked back at him for a moment. "Why are you here?"

He stood up and placed a hand on my shoulder.

"I'm here to pick you up."


	2. Chapter 2

The grass tickled my feet as we walked. It was hard to tell where we were going. I could imagine one losing their sense of direction pretty quickly.

"Where are we going?"

"Oh," Morro shrugged. "Just to find literally anyone else."

I looked down at our feet, still very confused. "Why were you out here in the first place if it was so far away from anyone?"

"I'm your 'guardian angel' I guess. It's the universe's annoying mentor system. I have to be here to guide you through the afterlife and whatnot, and once you get a hang of things, you can be someone else's guardian angel, and I can leave you be."

I crossed my arms. "How do you know who's angel you are?"

"You'll figure it out," He sighed. "The universe gets what it wants, that's for sure. I guess I should ask if you have any questions."

"Yeah, is the whole afterlife like this? Just endless nothing?" The vast emptiness scared me quite a bit.

"No," Morro shook his head. "The departed realm is the same as the physical, but you can only see and interact with places and things you remember from life. Evidently, you don't remember anything from the place you were born."

"Is that where this is?" I looked around, attempting to see anything.

"You're born into the afterlife where you were born in your physical life."

I sighed. So I really remember nothing from the village I was born in? It made sense. We moved shortly after I was born, but still, It seemed strange to have such a large part of myself disconnected from me. "Do you see anything here?"

"Oh yeah," he nodded. "Not much, and the details are fuzzy, but I can see the streets, and that's all I really need to get us to Ninjago City. I figured that's where you'd want to go, right?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "What will it even look like? Ninjago has been through a lot of changes."

"Just whatever version of it stands out on your mind at the moment."

I stopped moving and visualized the city, the way I knew it looked now. "I'm not sure I want to go there then."

Morro stopped as well, looking back at me. "What do you mean?"

"The city that I remember is in ruins. It's falling apart. I'm the one who made it that way!" He slowly started walking back towards me. "I'm not going back to see that."

I sat down again on the grass. Where was somewhere I could go? A place I had only fond memories of? Morro dropped onto the grass in front of me as well as I thought. "Everywhere I've lived has tragedy attached to it. There's no home that wouldn't be destroyed."

He remained quiet for a moment, thinking of something to say. "Hey. You want to see something cool?" He held out his hand for me to see.

I examined it, smiling. "Your hands are all pruney."

"Yeah," he sighed. "You get to keep scars from your death. I drowned, so I get to keep the wrinkles."

"Wasn't that your ghost death? Does that really count?"

"Any death counts. Drowning was my soul," He lifted up his shirt, revealing his stomach, practically a skeleton. "Starvation for my body, and," He lifted his shirt further to reveal what looked like stretch marks circling around his heart in a strange explosion of scars. "And identity crisis for my mind."

I stared at it for another second. "More like identity theft. It's like your heart was-"

"Ripped away from me." He lowered his shirt again, a bit ashamed. "I didn't have to lose my mind to it, but… I did."

"Did I lose my mind?" I whispered. I mean, of course, I did, at least to a degree. But did it count as a death? How would it even be represented? I fingers shot up to my eyes. "Do I have paint-"


End file.
